Album Choices

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Itinerary page, Alaska Album, 2009.

Himself: Very unhappy about Grumpy's expenditure yesterday. Badmouthed some folks who worked on it, and had steam coming out his ears. Very unlike himself....maybe the heat got to him. Applied for an 8 buck an hour job cleaning cars in his before-last field of expertise. Herself: Picked up Eastlake chair for Cancer Society, which they sold for $100, and a $700.00 dollar part broke in Grumpy's steering column. I too was not a happy camper. Gloom and doom. Watching the Kennedy ceremonies as much as I can. Crying. Reading: Not. Balance: Better today. Off to a Volunteer pot luck at G's museum.

This is the first album where I have chosen to incorporate the written word along with the images. Mother's many albums made after her jaunts around the world, don't always tell us dates or itineraries, those important "who, where, what, when's." She offers us lots of pictures but few notes.

I see she is in Greece or Russia, but I don't know the year or the ship. I'm lost....I hollar up at the ceiling, "Mother, what ship were you on that year?" Were you on a tour, with a group, or by yourself? Is this the trip where you fell down the stairs and broke your nose? Is this the trip when your hydrofoil struck the shark and you broke your arm? I see you coming down the gangplank with your clubs, but that's all I know. But she isn't here to fill in the details.

By the time I began this album, I mastered the art of scanning and printing psd's so can include the itinerary. I've learned the particularities of ordering digital photos online, and only one came back with part of the image cropped off the side. After printing the first page of my journal, I learned to check if I had hard copies of the pictures. Editing is me.

I made a choice to use a leather album with acid free paper inside cover sleeves. At an astronomical price, I could have had my pictures printed and bound between boards....but I would not have been a participant in the creation. So I print out edited journal pages and marry them with lose photographs. The writing is the caption.

I can do layout and paste up in my sleep.

This is much like newspaper graphics work. You ask yourself what you want each page to look like....in tandem with the opposite page. As a pair they are a whole. How do you want to whole book to look? How do you want to story to read? What kind of uniformity do you want? Are you using color headers? All small details that make up a whole combined with the information you want to share with the future.

Today I start on day four.....after an estate sale, the museum pot luck, dinner and a meeting. Maybe tomorrow I start on day four.


Day one, Alaska Album, 2009.